Audiophile Steels Wi-Fi

So you live in a remote area and need to get yourself some free internet from the idiot down the road without security on his network? Audiophile suggests you get your hands on an old foxtel dish and remove the LNB and replace it with a bow tie antenna and connect it up to your wireless card. This inconspicuous device can be mounted on your roof and looks just like a normal foxtel dish (most people won’t notice it’s not pointing at the right spot on the horizon.

The box tie antenna is made from copper off cuts and mounted to a pill container and offers approximately 12db of gain.

Boston Voyagers

Had this job some time ago to put some Boston voyager 6 speakers outside, these speakers sound amazing. I get to install some great equipment in my job but the voyager 6's sound so well balanced and have a remarkable bottom end for their size. They are a waterproof speaker and very robust, I had one occasion where there speakers had been installed under a tree; the dead leaf matter had decomposed on top of the speakers. The grills where covered with dirt and leaf waste. Put them under the hose and you could not tell the difference from the day when they rolled of the production line

Audiophile VS Car Audio

Audiophile car audio

Over the weekend I undertook the nasty task of installing a stereo into my car. Audiophiles such as myself have a dislike for car audi0. For some strange reason all principles of audio engineering do not seem to apply to car audio. Instead of trying to achieve balanced hi fidelity sound its all about shoehorning another subwoofer into the boots. Car audio does not appear to use any form of real measurement as I discovered and seem to pull arbitrary specifications out of thin air.

Choosing The Equipment

I went to my local automotive accessories supplier to find a reasonable collection of speakers. The shop assistant looked like he had more experience removing car stereos from Bankstown carparks than installing them. He showed me some Sony speakers which he seemed to think where the best things going, which sounded very nasty.

One of my major issues with car audio is the location of the speaker, its going to be near imposable to achieve any sort of reasonable stereo imaging with two speakers just above the floor of the car. Our hearing is very directional at higher frequencies so I took this into consideration when shopping and opted for a two way design. This has two woofers and two tweeters that mount on the dashboard of the car. Separating the tweeter from the woofer is another issue in its self, and creates a huge range of problems of its own, most notably the sound from the tweeters reach your ears before the sound from the woofer. I decided that this was going to be about the only way I was going to get any reasonable sort of stereo imaging, it’s a trade of but everything in car audio is.

After listing to a selection of speakers I settled on a 6.5” two way design by an audio company called Alpine, the speakers did not sound good by a long shot but sounded allot cleaner in the midrange than everything else. The tweeters sounded horrible and beamy.

Fitting The Speakers

The next problem I had was the car door of my company car had 4.5” speakers and the speakers I liked where 6.5” I got on the phone to a few friends who had experience with car audio installations and the general consensus was to cut some of the door out and fit a spacer to the door. I used a nibbler tool and made a cutout to fit these speakers.

Once I cut the hole I used some spaces to get the speaker spacer to sit flat on the door. I used gaffer tape to make sure I had an airtight seal around the spacer.

Measurements

Once I had everything installed I turned it up, it did not go particularly loud before clipping. I was surprised as the Pioneer head unit I had installed had a rating of 50W per channel. I connected up my oscilloscope to the output and calculated the output at an amazing 7W RMS into my 8Ohm dummy load. Needles to say even into a 4Ohm load the power output was laughably low compared to the specs. The frequency response on the side of the box showed the frequency response between 50hz-22K on a graph with the smallest unit on the vertical of the graph being 20dB! Needless to say at a glance the speakers appeared to have an amazingly flat response. Quite frankly every single specification the manufacturer gave on these speakers where not worth the paper they were printed on.

I don’t know what it is with all these car audio systems, from time to time in home theater we get some amplifiers boasting more than optimistic power output but nothing quite this ridicules. For some odd reason most things in car audio seem to be measured in peak power output which is a completely meaningless value directly proportional to the size of the power supply capacitors.

Once I got the speakers in I measured the frequency response, there was a big peak around 8k and another at around 190hz, the response was very ordinary with peaks and troughs all over the place, (nothing like that nice flat response boosted on the side of the box!)

I spent some time with the EQ getting the response as flat as possible. The speakers rolled off at around 120hz so if I am to achieve any bottom end I will need to look at installing a subwoofer.

Stay tuned for more updates on this one!

Point Piper

The home network, Network printer, Patch bay, 42 Port managed switch, Linksys router (and my sexy new laptop) bit of a rats nest at the moment but should look nice once its all done. The network forms the backbone for the Sonos music system. Wireless access points throughout the unit. You can also see the C-Bus panel running the automated lighting.


Some great joinery (custom made) to hide the screen when its not in use
Sonos throughout the place and views to die for

Point Piper

This was a job I was on at point piper. The unit had some amazing views,

The pole and bracket holding the screen where custom fabricated (at amazing expense) from stainless steel. The results where outstanding

The rack is by middle Atlantic racking systems. All the patch cables are made to length to minimize cable clutter. Racking systems like this are fantastic from a service point of view, you can get to everything you need to super quickly and it keeps all the equipment well ventilated

Mosman Job

First post in this blog,
Spent the last two days working on an installation in Mosman,

The wall is stone clad so it took a bit of work getting the screen bracket on but the results where great. Underneath the screen are three Krix micro centrix speakers for the front left right and center channels. The wall was custom made to house all three speakers with the grills sitting flush with the surface of the wall. The rear speakers (Not seen in this photo) are in ceiling
Above you can see the equipment for the main screen, and Integra 7.5 amplifier, Jm Labs Cub Sub, Sony BD, Foxtell IQ, Sonos ZP90, The white box on top of the Foxtel is a modulator that pipes the foxtell throught the house using the antenna system.
Note the neat patchinng, no ugly cables ;-)
Once its doors are closed you would have no idea it contained all the audio visual gear.


We have smart wired this house which means every room has one Cat5 one Cat6 and two Quad sheild coaxial cables run to every rooom in the house, all these points come back to the centralized Hills Home hub shown in the photo above

Above is the hills home hub, you can see the SMC network switch, Cable Modem (white box) Linksys router and the black box under the data cables is a 1TB Lacie network drive. The black cables are coax, these are used to carry Foxtel and free to air TV to each room.
Once I setup the home network it is used for the Sonos music system and the hard drive acts as a centralized point for sharing movies, music and backing up documents.


Check out the size of this stereo power amp!
The speakers are floor standing JM Labs, this is for one sonos zoneKids TV, Xbox and DVD

Welcome

This blog is to document some of my experiences as a high end audio visual installer,
I work for a Sydney based company installing home cinemas, multi room audio, home networks and home automation into some of Sydneys most prestigous homes. I get to mingle with with some of sydneys wealthy and elite and some of the most trying people on the face of this planet.

I love my job,
There are not many jobs where you can show up in the morning with boxes full of the latest expensive high tech equipment and spend the day setting it all up.

It this blog I hope to share some tips of the trade to help you get the most from your own home theater and give you some ideas for your own audio visual projects.